deepening shadows gather splendor
by Kaiyote
Summary: He has no idea who he is. (Set 10 years after the events of Ace Chemicals.)


**deepening shadows gather splendor**

* * *

He wakes up strapped to a hospital bed.

The ceiling swims in and out of focus as he blinks blearily up at it before his vision settles. He turns his head to the side and silently watches as a nurse makes her rounds, her shoes click-clacking on the linoleum floor when she moves and pen scribbling something down on her clipboard when she stops.

The nurse on duty turns to him, finally, then gives a little start and a squeak of surprise as it registers to her that he's awake and has been staring at her the whole time. He lets out a low, dark chuckle at the action, amused by the shock coloring her face. She drops her clipboard and pen and rushes off, shoes click-clack, click-clacking; he watches her go, still chuckling.

He has no idea who he is.

* * *

The doctors tell him that he's in a place called Arkham Asylum. (They fail to tell him it's for the _criminally insane_, a fact he doesn't find out about until a week after first awakening.) They tell him that he was admitted there a little over 9 years ago, as soon as the place reopened. (They don't tell him under what circumstances it had closed down in the first place.) They tell him that he'd been in a terrible accident about 10 years ago. (They don't disclose any of the details about the accident beyond that.) They tell him that he was initially pronounced brain dead and that it's a miracle he's awake now. They tell him it's a miracle he's even alive at all.

They tell him they don't know his name. They tell him that he's simply _John Doe_.

* * *

"Mirror," he whispers to a nurse, voice raspy after years of disuse or because of the 'accident,' or both.

The nurse, different from the one he saw when he first woke up, looks uncertain about his request and sounds as much when she says, "I— I'm not sure if—"

"Mirror!" he barks out, voice gaining volume, hands slapping against the bed sheets in frustration as much as they're able to what with him still being strapped to the bed and all. The nurse backs away from him and leaves but returns a few minutes later with a compact clutched in her hands. Shakily, she opens it and holds the mirror up to his face so he can see himself.

Pale—_too_ pale, almost corpse-like—glassy blue eyes stare back at him. His lips are an unnatural shade of red. His skin is chalk white and horribly scarred. The only hair on his head is but a few stringy, mangy tufts of green here and there. _A joke!_ He thinks as he watches ruby red lips still unfamiliar to him stretch into a shark-like smile before a shriek of laughter erupts from him. _What a joke!_ The nurse closes the compact with a quick snap_!_ and scurries off, frightened.

His laughter echoes throughout the halls of Arkham until a doctor comes in with a needle that sends him off to oblivion with a tiny prick.

* * *

The doctors spend a week subjecting him to a litany of tests and the same endless dull, inane questions over and over again, day after day.

_("How are you feeling today?" "Do you remember who you are?"_

_He answers the first question and those of their ilk in the same bored tone every time ("Fine"), but the last never fails to send him into fits of laughter.)_

But, after the tests continue to come back clear and he's answered their questions for what must be the hundredth time, they deem him fit to be released into the general population of the asylum.

* * *

A radio drones on incessantly in the background of the common room; a mix of oldies (_"Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill me like days of old, lighting the spark of love that fills me with dreams untold")_ in between a smattering of ads and news. Perhaps calling it _news_ is being a bit generous, though, as none of it seems to be particularly news_worthy _to him; the only 'news' the station ever seems to be interested in is the return of Bruce Wayne and his escapades.

Bruce Wayne, the man who tragically witnessed his parents' murder in front of him when he was only a boy. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy. Bruce Wayne, Gotham's handsome and most eligible bachelor, spotted at a different restaurant with a different woman on his arm for every day of the week. Bruce Wayne, who only made his triumphant return to Gotham a little more than a week prior after almost a decade of absence.

(He tests the name out in his room one night. "Bruce, Bruce, Bruce," he whispers to himself, in different tones and inflections until it no longer sounds like a name and loses all meaning, before devolving into laughter. Despite the name feeling strange but somehow familiar on his tongue, almost like he's said it before, he still can't place it. There's no spark to ignite a flame of recognition, or anything else, within him.)

* * *

He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know who he _was_. He has no memories before this place, but… There are _feelings_, instincts; muscle memory hardwired into his brain. He's certain he's never stepped foot in Arkham before but somehow he knows the place far better than the back of his scarred hand. He finds himself absentmindedly drawing mazes and scribbling horrible, terrible (hilarious, genius) drawings (future plans) of death, destruction, and mayhem into his journal.

Then there are the _dreams_; intangible things. Foggy, cloudy images. Indistinguishable voices and familiar laughter that doesn't quite sound like his own. Murky figures that he can almost yet never quite discern and that disappear into wisps of purple smoke whenever he reaches out to touch them. And there is always—_always_—the shadow of a man. _The_ man. Always in black. Always hidden in the dark. A mystery.

When he wakes, he knows he's in love. But, like with his own identity, he doesn't know with whom.

* * *

A few months pass and the buzz surrounding Bruce Wayne's reappearance dies down, though; it certainly doesn't come to a complete standstill as there's always _something_ the press has to say about him. But, a new figure seems to have emerged to steal his spot in the limelight, at least for the moment.

A caped crusader. A masked vigilante. A _Bat-man_ has taken up to protecting the streets of Gotham and its citizens. _Gotham's very own (dark) knight in shining armor_, he thinks to himself ruefully as he watches more and more patients (deranged criminals) dragged into the asylum day after day.

The first time he sees an image of him is on the front page of a newspaper on the night guard's desk. (He's taken to sneaking out of his room at night to wander the halls of Arkham; it's an easy task that he accomplishes on his first night out of the medical ward.) The picture is grainy, blurry, lacking in details, but the silhouette of the masked man atop a building is clear enough to cause something to stir in him.

_More_ than _something_. His heart pounds in his chest, blood rushes faster through his veins, his pulse quickens, butterflies unfurl and flutter in his stomach—the whole nine yards. He lets out a breathy sigh of pleasure, a dreamy laugh. This—_this!_—is him. This _freak_ dressed as a _bat_ is _him_. The man from his dreams. The man he's in love with. He knows it's him. He's the one. _Batman_. He laughs breathlessly again.

A hand grabs his shoulder suddenly as a voice from behind him says, "What are you doing out of your room, John?" He drops the newspaper back onto the desk, grabbing a pencil as he's forcibly turned around and jabs it into the guard's eye without a thought. Then, just as quickly and before the guard can let out a cry of alarm to alert anyone else, he slits the guard's throat with a knife he'd stolen. (Another task he'd accomplished on that first night out, and that he's had hidden on his person ever since for just such an occasion.) He smiles as blood sprays across his face and the guard falls to the floor, dead.

He pockets the knife and picks up the paper again, smearing blood across the image of Batman as he tenderly traces over it with a finger. He starts humming one of the old tunes he's constantly heard playing on the radio before singing it softly and giggling to himself.

_"Only you can make this world seem right... Only you can make the darkness bright…"_

He waltzes through the halls, newspaper still in hand, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in his wake.

_"Only you and you alone can thrill me like you do..."_

He breaks out of Arkham that night, finally having a reason to. A _purpose_.

_"You're my dream come true..." _

An identity—a _true_ identity, not this "John Doe" or whoever else he may have been before the _accident_—slowly starts to take shape and form within him as words come back to him, unbidden.

_"My one and only you..."_

Without me, you're just a **_joke_**.


End file.
